International South Africa's Water Crisis: Taps Have Run Dry Across Johannesburg

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There Is a Water Crisis in Cape Town

By Sarah Khan | Dec. 27, 2017

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An advisory for the water crisis at Cape Town International Airport.

Thanks to its famous coastline and peninsular setting, tourists in Cape Town expect that they will be surrounded by water — and lots of it. But as visitors have descended this month for the peak summer tourist season, they have been greeted at the airport with signs beseeching them to “Slow the flow: Save H2O” and “Don’t waste a drop!” among others.

Cape Town is in the throes of a severe drought because unseasonably dry winters have led to dangerously low dam levels. As of mid-December, the city’s dams were at about 33 percent capacity, according to the mayor’s office, and what officials have dubbed “Day Zero” is looming: that’s the date the dams will drop below 13.5 percent, taps will be turned off, and residents will have to line up at 200 checkpoints across the city to collect daily water allotments, with police and military deployed to monitor the situation. As of Dec. 18, based on current consumption and expected rainfall, Day Zero is projected to be April 29, 2018.

“The city of Cape Town could conceivably become the first major city in the world to run out of water, and that could happen in the next four months,” said Dr. Anthony Turton, a professor at the Centre for Environmental Management at the University of the Free State. “It’s not an impending crisis — we’re deep, deep, deep in crisis.”

As the city races to implement alternatives through recycling, boreholes and desalination by February, residents are restricted to 87 liters (23 gallons) of water per person per day. “We are all in this together and we can only save water while there is still water to be saved,” Zara Nicholson, the spokeswoman for Executive Mayor Patricia de Lille, said in an email. Residents are asked to meet that number by limiting showers to two minutes, turning off taps while brushing teeth, avoiding flushing toilets regularly (“If it’s yellow, let it mellow,” as one sign puts it) and using recycled water when they do, not watering gardens or topping off swimming pools, and using hand sanitizer instead of soap and water. But as the city struggles to hit a household consumption target of less than 500 million liters per day, anxiety continues to build.

“I think it’s kind of like, you know when you have a health scare, so you just ignore it till you’re dying on the ground?” said Natalie Roos, a Cape Town-based blogger. “I think that’s pretty much where we’re at.”

Despite the gravity of the situation, officials say that visitors are welcome. “The City of Cape Town certainly welcomes and encourages all tourists to Cape Town to visit our beautiful iconic city,” Ms. Nicholson wrote. “Tourism is a major job creator and one our most important sectors.”

About 150,000 people, or 10 percent of the city’s 1.5 million annual foreign visitors, visit Cape Town in December, but many tourists are unaware of the severity of the situation until they hear pilots making announcements just before landing at Cape Town International Airport. Experts say there’s no reason for travelers to stay away, but raising awareness and water consciousness is essential.

“Tourists traveling to a destination, in terms of being a responsible traveler, should always be aware of context of a destination to which they’re traveling, whether it’s cultural sensitivity or religious sensitivity,” said Lisa Scriven, the director of Levelle Perspectives, which works to implement sustainable tourism practices. “This is water sensitivity.”

Ms. Scriven pointed out that the surge in tourists does not correlate to a surge in water consumption — many Capetonians leave the city for the holidays and the construction industry shuts down; tourists only represent a 1 to 3 percent increase in population during the season. But the travel industry is encouraging sustainable practices for all, locals and visitors alike: hotels send notices upon booking and add signage asking guests to be conscientious during stays, while also removing bath plugs, installing new shower heads that reduce water flow, adding timers to help guests keep showers under two minutes, and refraining from daily linen changes.

The eco-friendly Hotel Verde has placed stickers in bathrooms educating guests on how many glasses of water are used in one bath while also incentivizing guests for good water practices — giving discounts for not requesting ice and glasses and drinking straight from the bottle, for instance. The Taj Cape Town is closing down steam rooms and hot tubs in its spa and has stopped offering a standard honeymoon amenity of a rose-petal laden bath. The city’s “Save Like a Local” campaign asks all visitors, whether they’re staying in hotels or holiday rentals, to pitch in — by using a bucket in the shower to recycle water, not requesting fresh towels and linens daily, and adapting the practices that are becoming the norm for Capetonians.

“Now do you see this beautiful bath? It’s now a sculpture,” the Airbnb host Alison von During said she tells her guests as she shows them around, before briefing them on the water restrictions.

Although things may change if Day Zero becomes a reality, for now travelers are encouraged to be respectful of the crisis while still enjoying a visit to one of the world’s most beautiful cities — the income generated by tourism is not something South Africa can afford to lose, as tourism accounts for 9.4 percent of the country’s GDP.

“The tourist dollar is lifeblood of economy, and we obviously don’t want send out a symbol that the city is going to collapse,” Dr. Turton said. “I think it’s important that all tourists become hyperaware that there is a serious water crisis, but I don’t think we want them to have a bad experience as a result of that. We want to appeal to the tourists’ conscience, to enjoy the city but do the right thing by the local community.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/27/travel/water-crisis-cape-town-travelers.html
 
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This has more to do with black apartheid in South Africa and mismanagement of resources.
 
This has more to do with black apartheid in South Africa and mismanagement of resources.
That's what I thought when I read the title but if they really did have a multiyear drought then on what basis do you make this claim? And what does apartheid have to do with it?
 
That's what I thought when I read the title but if they really did have a multiyear drought then on what basis do you make this claim? And what does apartheid have to do with it?
He is saying the Blacks instituted Apartheid after the original one was done away with. Atleast that's what I think he is saying, based on his conservative/rightwing sensibilities.
 
He is saying the Blacks instituted Apartheid after the original one was done away with. Atleast that's what I think he is saying, based on his conservative/rightwing sensibilities.
I thought so too and I have an idea of where he's taking this but I wanted to give him a chance to clarify and justify his position.
 
Alright fuck it

Water distribution in Cape Town by July

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That's what I thought when I read the title but if they really did have a multiyear drought then on what basis do you make this claim? And what does apartheid have to do with it?

There whole infrastructure in South Africa is jacked and it has a lot to do with the fact South African companies are required by law to hire any black that meets the bare minimum requirements of a job over a white even if the white is much more qualified white.

This and other discrimination against white people has caused issues with their infrastructure and food stocks. If they had equal opportunity hiring they would have been able to deal with this issue before it became a disaster.

All I am saying is if you purposely hire barely or unqualified people over qualified people I don';t have a lot of sympathy when the people you hired can't handle a crisis.



Here is a article about how the government mismanaged the water.
https://www.timeslive.co.za/politic...-crisis-driven-by-politics-more-than-drought/
Cape Town is hurtling towards “Day Zero”: the day taps run dry. This is expected in mid-May, just weeks after the city’s new water supplies are due.

Cape Town is quite used to surviving dry years. Water restrictions get it through and then dams refill, thanks to the wet years that usually follow.

But this time it’s different. Never in recorded history has Cape Town encountered a drought of such severity for three consecutive years.

One of the biggest debates is whether local government is handling the crisis effectively. Investigating this question exposes politics, not rainfall, at the heart of the problem.

The Western Cape is the only province in the country run by the Democratic Alliance, while the African National Congress runs the rest. This means that the relationship between national government and the Western Cape is complicated, as the water crisis
Two tiers of governance – the Western Cape province and the City of Cape Town – went above and beyond what was required to prepare for drought. The system failed, however, at the level of national government.

Wasteful expenditure in the national Department of Water and Sanitation, erroneous water allocations to agriculture and a failure to acknowledge or respond to provincial and municipal calls for help obstructed timely interventions.

National government’s numerous spanners jammed up the works of a system that could have managed the crisis quite effectively.

The Western Cape’s water situation
Six major dams make up 99.6% of the volume of water in the Western Cape Water Supply System.

Cape Town’s strategy for handling droughts is based on a warning system that kicks in when dam levels are lower than normal for a particular time of year. About once every ten years, there is extremely low rainfall around the major Theewaterskloof Dam. The last dam level scare was in 2004-2005.

In 2007, the national Department of Water and Sanitation issued a warning about Cape Town’s water supply, saying the city would need new water sources by 2015.

The deadline was based on normal rainfall and water demand trends. Unusually dry winters and higher water consumption could shorten this deadline considerably.

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The city took the warning seriously and acted quickly. It implemented a water demand management strategy involving water meter replacements, pressure management, leak detection and free plumbing repairs for indigent households.

The strategy was so effective that the city met its 2015-2016 water saving target three years early. This pushed the deadline back to 2019, based on normal rainfall and normal water use.

Following a wet 2013-2014, the South African Weather Service estimated that Cape Town’s 2014-2016 rainfall would be only slightly lower than normal, conforming to weather patterns recorded since 1976.

Based on the information available to the city, it was on target for implementing the first water augmentation project by 2019: increasing water supply to the Voëlvlei dam. Then disaster struck: a drought more severe than anything in Cape Town’s history.

Bad decisions
Provinces don’t have the power to make water allocations to agriculture. This is done by the national government.

In 2015, the city of Cape Town was allocated 60% of the water from the Western Cape’s water supply system. Almost all of the rest went to agriculture, particularly long-term crops like fruit and wine as well as livestock.

The drought began to take its toll on provincial dam levels. Yet the national Department of Water and Sanitation took no action to curtail agricultural water use in 2015/2016.

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There is evidence that the department’s failure went even further: that it allocated too much water to agriculture in the Western Cape. This pushed demand for water beyond the capacity of the supply system and consumed Cape Town’s safety buffer of 28 thousand megaliters.

Cape Town shows some of the best water saving levels in the world. But its supply dams are being hit by national government’s bungled water allocations to agriculture.

Calls for help
In response to low winter rainfalls in 2015, provincial government took pre-emptive action and applied to national government for R35 million to increase water supplies by drilling boreholes and recycling water.

But national government rejected the request, possibly because dams were still 75% full.

The following year, national government agreed to recognise only five of the 30 Western Cape municipalities as drought disaster areas. (Significantly Cape Town was not included.) But by October 2017, national government had still not released the promised funds.

The Cape Town Mayor appealed directly to the Department of Water and Sanitation for disaster relief funding. But this was rejected on the grounds that Cape Town was “not yet at crisis level”.

The cause of the crisis
The civil society group, South African Water Caucus, reveals that national government’s reluctance to release drought relief funding stemmed from spiralling debt, mismanagement and corruption in the national Department of Water and Sanitation.

This claim is supported by the Auditor General, which attributes “irregular and fruitless and wasteful expenditure” to the department exceeding its 2016-2017 budget by R110.8 million.

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The department has no funding allocated to drought relief in the Western Cape next year. Again, provincial government will have to foot the bill.

Had systems in national government been running smoothly, Cape Town’s water crisis could have been mitigated. Appropriate water allocations would have made more water available to Cape Town. And with timely responses to disaster declarations, water augmentation infrastructure could have been up and running already.

Cape Town teaches us that water crises are rarely a matter of rainfall. Understanding disasters like droughts involves seeing the issue from many different perspectives, including politics.
 
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Cape Town to become the first major city in the world to run out of water
Zoë Schlanger | January 11, 2018

cape-town1-e1515615124763.jpg

It’s the height of summer in Cape Town, and the southwesternmost region of South Africa is gripped by a catastrophic water shortage.

Unless the city adopts widespread rationing, the government says, the taps “will be turned off” on April 22, 2018, because there will be no more water to deliver.

This would make Cape Town the first major city in the world to run out of water, according to Anthony Turton, a professor at the Centre for Environmental Management at the University of the Free State in South Africa, who spoke to the New York Times. “It’s not an impending crisis—we’re deep, deep, deep in crisis.” The shortage is the result of a multi-year drought.



The city is asking residents to restrict their water use to 87 liters per person per day. That’s roughly the equivalent of a four-minute shower using a regular shower head, or an eight-minute shower using a low-flow shower head.

Cape Town’s water system isn’t built to withstand a multi-year drought (nor are any city’s water system), which are expected to occur “perhaps as rarely as once in a millennium,” according to a group of professors from the University of Cape Town.

This particular drought won’t last forever. But according to climate models, it is likely part of a trend for the Western Cape of South Africa, where climate change is expected to bring lower chances of wet years and higher chances of dry years as the century progresses, according to Piotr Wolski, a hydrologist with the Climate Systems Analysis Group. Water rationing may soon become the norm for the city of 4 million.

https://qz.com/1176981/the-worlds-f...f-water-may-have-just-over-three-months-left/
 
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I guess the drought has been going on for three to four years. It seems like people all over the world, should start taking their water supply way more serious.

I know some here will try and make it a race issue, we already can see that. That's kind of shitty that people will look for any reason to do so. It looks like many people may need to relocate if this is going to be a long term problem as projected. If they fear they will see more droughts than wet years.
 
Although not the best for the environment, is it time to build desalination plants?
 
Just remember these are the ones that will be hit hardest by this. Every day native Boers face persecution and government discrimination. These are the real refugees I am glad Georgia is taking in some. The U.S. should follow suit.



 
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I guess the drought has been going on for three to four years. It seems like people all over the world, should start taking their water supply way more serious.

I know some here will try and make it a race issue, we already can see that. That's kind of shitty that people will look for any reason to do so. It looks like many people may need to relocate if this is going to be a long term problem as projected. If they fear they will see more droughts than wet years.

Canada needs more racist Africans and has plenty of water.
 
I guess the drought has been going on for three to four years. It seems like people all over the world, should start taking their water supply way more serious.

We take our water supply VERY seriously in SoCal.

And by that, I meant we're actively stealing from everybody who have a natural water source to prevent something like this from ever happening to us.
 
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The white man being systematically dehydrated itt...

Anyhow, droughts (particularly in the southern hemisphere) are predicted to get worse and more frequent as ocean surface temperatures keep spiking.
 
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